The Winter Sea

Shortly after that, I’d found the papers by Nathaniel Hooke, and learned about his dream of a rebellion, and…

It was, I knew, a convoluted explanation, and most people who asked where I got my ideas were looking for a shorter answer, so I said to Dr Weir that I had picked the 1708 rebellion just because, ‘I liked Nathaniel Hooke.’

‘Ah, Hooke.’ The doctor nodded. ‘He’s an interesting character. An Irishman, though, not a Scot. You knew that? Yes, he came to Slains on two occasions, I believe. The first in 1705, to gauge support among the nobles for his plan to bring the young king back, and then again in 1707, to set everything in motion.’

‘I’m just dealing with the second visit, really. And the actual attempt at the invasion, the next winter.’ I settled back and took another careful sip of whisky, and explained how, since I’d started writing my book from the French side of things, I needed to fill in some gaps on my knowledge of Slains. ‘Jimmy said you knew a lot about the castle.’

‘That I do.’

‘It’s his pet subject,’ Elsie told me, with a fond, indulgent smile. ‘I hope you’ve nothing else to do, this evening.’

Dr Weir, ignoring her, said, ‘What, specifically, were you wanting to know?’

‘Whatever you can tell me.’ I had learned from years of doing research not to put restrictions on the things that people told me and although he’d likely touch on things I’d read about already, I’d learn more from him if I just let him talk, and kept my own mouth shut.

He started with the history of the Hays, the Earls of Erroll, who had built Slains. ‘It’s an old and noble family. There’s a legend told about the Hays, you know, that in the ancient days an ancestor of theirs was ploughing a field with his two sons, in sight of a battlefield on which the Danes were destroying the Scots forces. And, says the legend, when one of the Scots lines began to break up and retreat, well, this farmer—a large man, with powerful arms—snatched the yoke from his oxen to use as a weapon, and called to his sons, and together the three of them herded the Scots soldiers back into battle and reformed the line, and the Danes, in the end, were defeated. The king then took the farmer and his sons to Perth, and let a falcon off from Kinnoull Hill, and said that all the land the falcon flew over was to be theirs. And the bird flew to a stone, still called the Hawk’s Stone, in St Madoes Parish, so then the farmer was master of some of the finest lands north of the Tay, and a man of great wealth.

‘It’s no more than a tale, mind, and there’s nothing written down to give it proof, but to this day the Chiefs of Hay still carry as their coat of arms the king’s falcon, and the ox-yoke, and three bloodstained shields, one each for that brave farmer and his sons. And the family’s motto, translated, means “Keep the Yoke”. So they believe it, anyway.’

He paused, because he’d noticed that I’d taken out my notebook and was writing down the legend, and he gave me time to finish.

‘Do you have all that?’ he asked me. ‘Good. I’ll try to go more slowly for you. Now, about the Hays. They came from Normandy, according to the history books. They were raised to the title of earls in the mid-fifteenth century, and fully a hundred years before that, they’d been made Lord High Constables of Scotland by Robert the Bruce himself. That’s an influential office, Lord High Constable, and a hereditary one, passed down the family through the generations, along with a fierce devotion to the Catholic cause.

‘They supported Mary, Queen of Scots’s son, James VI, till James decided to turn Protestant. That was too much for the 9th Earl of Erroll, and he led a mounted attack on the king’s forces. Got himself an arrow wound for his efforts, as I recall. And he made King James so angry that the king marched north personally to sack the Earl of Erroll’s castles at Delgatie and Old Slains, just south of here. Destroyed them both with gunpowder and cannon. The Earl of Erroll spent a few years biding time in exile, then came back to Scotland, and, instead of trying to rebuild Old Slains, decided to build anew, around a tower house the Hays kept here. So then he called this New Slains.

‘New Slains is the one you want to know about. The other was long gone when Colonel Hooke came over. In 1708… now, let me think…the Earl of Erroll who’d have been here would have been the 13th earl, Charles Hay, the last male of the line. And his mother, the Countess of Erroll, Anne Hay, was a driving force in the conspiracy. But then,’ he said, ‘she would have been. She was a Drummond, and her brother was the Duke of Perth, a powerful man at the court of the Stewarts, in France. She was committed to trying to bring back the king. A remarkable woman. The Countesses of Erroll have, through history, been more interesting,’ he told me, ‘than their men.’

He drank his whisky, and the warm light in the little room reflected on the thousand points of intricately cut glass on his tumbler, and his round, old-fashioned glasses, behind which his eyes turned thoughtful. ‘Mind you, her son, the 13th earl, did have some fire in his belly. He hated the Union, and fought it till his dying breath, in any way he could. And then, of course, he was a Hay, and a supporter of the Stewart kings, and that was not a choice a man made lightly. Dangerous times, so they were.’ He mused on this a moment, then went on, ‘He didn’t think to marry and produce an heir before he died, and so he passed the title to his sister. Another interesting Countess of Erroll, she was, but that’s a different story altogether. Anyway, she had no heir either, so from her the title went sideways, into her nieces and nephews, and out of the old family. Slains, though, stayed with the Earls of Erroll until 1916, when the 20th earl had to sell it for death duties. The new owner eventually gave up on it, and had the roof taken off in the 1920s—for safety, they say, though more likely it was so he wouldn’t have to pay the taxes. After that, well, with no roof, the place just fell to ruin.’